The Nature of Predators 2-90

Memory Transcription Subject: Taylor Trench, Human Colonist

Date [standardized human time]: March 18, 2161

The past month and few odd days had been a whirlwind, one that left me unable to stay on Earth with Gress. The United Nations relented to permit us to join assault forces on Avor, when Captain Sovlin was pointed to as a precedent. We had to go. Even if I wasn’t returning to Tellus long-term, I wasn’t going to let the Krev throw himself into danger to rescue his family. Avor was not going to allow any of its citizens to evacuate to the SC, after they pieced together that we knew the truth about them perpetuating the Federation’s existence; humanity’s shift in temperament, and known discovery of the ghost Farsul station, allowed them to put two and two together. 

In the United Nations’ blitzkrieg strategy, its 82 allies had been busy with a variety of engagements. The ghost Farsul had hundreds of thousands of ships to concentrate on key spots, though they’d relinquished some worlds swiftly—like the Tevin’s, a shitty Shield member that chose to side with the Federation. That organization was still rotten as could be. There was likely a lot of planning that went into battering Grenelka for weeks, though I found it uninteresting. It didn’t even matter to me what that KC drone fleet did, despite the fact that they’d dropped all pretense and shifted the directives to aid the Federation.

I cared about one battle: the battle of Avor, and saving Gress’ family. My rage over learning that the Tellus colonists had been shafted on purpose, with full knowledge of who we were, provided a secondary motive; the Krev were somehow more heartless than I thought they were, back when I believed they were just another Feddie race that would hate us. Just like General Radai had wanted a decapitation strike against the Federation, I knew we had to follow the lessons of humanity’s first space war. If we cut off the head of the serpent that was the Consortium, it would simplify the task of bringing the Remnants to heel.

As a two-front war, we can’t afford for this to be stretched out; we don’t want to give the Krev or the ghosts any time to recede further out. There’ll never be any way to ensure there’s not some lurking out there, except to expand throughout the entire Milky Way and protect others under our umbrella. After this, humanity can’t be content to rest on our laurels. Maybe…we could find the other arks.

“Why did the Jaslips wait so long to drop that info?” a testy Gress spat, eyes misty from lack of sleep. “I hate this! They’re all living in ignorance down there, every second that we waited.”

“The JIB had to wait for us to be close, since the Krev might hack into the Resket ships—like they altered the attack drones’ course once we knew. They needed a failsafe ready, and they also needed to produce as much hardware as possible. It’s a lot of data drives to drop on several worlds. We’re able to supplement that disk count, so the truth can rain down to everyone.” I still felt strange being the voice of reason, but I couldn’t blame the Krev’s mental state for breaking down after the progressively worse revelations about the Consortium…and now his family’s grave peril. “I don’t know what happens with their entire populace turned against them. With any luck, a quick surrender.”

“You don’t get it, Taylor. They’ll have their power, any way they can. I’ve seen now that it’s possible to press rewind, and surely they can do the same.”

Cala tilted her beak, causing the Peacekeeper helmet to slip down her forehead. “Believe me, it is not possible to press rewind. All of us know that. I wish I could roll the clock back and not have terrible bloodshed tied to my name, to my image, to my species. I wish that wasn’t my childhood—like Taylor wishes Tellus wasn’t his.”

“The only way to rewind is to revert to a you that doesn’t remember it happened. Open your eyes, Krakotl, it’s right there…no, no, you’ll see. I saw back when the UN took me. Mafani…it all made sense. They watch you, and they own you. If the people are a problem, why keep the physical people? Replace—”

I squeezed his wrist insistently. “It’s not a good idea for you to be going into this. I get that it’s your family, but you’re raving in ways that seem disconnected altogether from the world around you. Let your mind and body recover a bit. You need to rest!”

“I wanted to. Remember when we thought we were going to do the play for Loxsel? The Sivkits will never move back in, Taylor. The Tellish must get out!”

“Shh, the UN has gotten this under control. The Tellus colonists do know, thanks to our people being on world. It’s clear how they extorted all of our hurt and kept us from home. They don’t want to go anywhere, but what’s important is that the babies were rushed back to Paltan space. Millions of kids out of the line of fire.”

“But not mine. Not Lecca, my little girl all alone and scared…not having seen her dad for months. Those babies they had to get out of the way: we were the ones bringing them to Tellus. I thought we were doing something important, then thought I was going to lose you to the Federation. When I saw you shut the door—”

“I would’ve died to save you then, and I’d do the same now. I know what they did has affected you terribly, but I don’t want to lose you to it. Then Mafani will have broken you. You were kind and brought me back to life when I was nothing but brokenness; by God, I’ll do the same. We get your daughter out, we run for Earth, and never look back. One more battle, then you don’t have to worry about losing the ones we love ever again. All of that pain will be behind us.”

“A happy life of validation, like I know was always your guiding wish. You’re right. You’ve come too far for me to let myself drag you down.”

“Taylor’s let go of his bitterness and self-loathing, something I can tell you is impossible for many people with our level of baggage to do,” Cala squawked. “He did that because of you. Don’t forget that. Helping the blokes we care about doesn’t drag us down. It gives us a chance to pull them up because we want them with us; we want them to be better.”

I gave Gress a reassuring pat on the back. “What she said, but without the British accent. I’m here because I want to be. What they did is fucking inexcusable, and humanity needs to wipe out this ideology once and for all, no matter how much of the galaxy we have to torch.”

“A controlled burn, as the firefighters call it. The opposite of what the exterminators’ guild did back on Nishtal.”

“Cala, there was plenty of control in spraying everything with binocular eyes in white-hot flames, basking in the screams. The phrase just carried a different meaning!”

“Believe me, I know. If I hadn’t been on the bloody extermination fleet, that would’ve been my lot in life. My parents wanted me to join the guild—and fuck, I wanted to. The little bubbly chick with a toy flamethrower: I’m sick just thinking about what my life was. How I’d still choose burning animals alive over spending another day around my biological father. You wished for your parents, Taylor…and I wish I never had mine at all.”

“I’m sorry, truly. I know how much of a hole it filled just to have my parents welcome me back and want me there. You deserved that.”

“I got it. From Andy, my adoptive Papa. My real Papa. I know you’d lay down your life for Gress, because I’d gratefully die to repay everything he’s done for me. We’re the same person, with a few variables changed.”

“You’ve felt a lot of the same emotions,” Gress agreed. “I never thought I’d see Taylor chatting with and outright pitying a Krakotl.”

I arched an eyebrow. “You didn’t see it. You heard it.”

“I stand corrected. I know you want me to rest, but I…want to hear us make contact with Avor. I have to know how things are going down on the surface.”

“We’ll watch what’s going on in the command center. Together.”

I strolled into the troop carrier’s observation desk, clutching Gress’ paw and not caring what nasty looks a Krev afoot on a human ship would acquire.  The last time I’d been standing on a bridge equivalent as a foot soldier, it had been when the Sivkits entered our system; I wasn’t proud of how I conducted myself that day. I was going to make sure Gress didn’t find himself grappling with the same regrets. Perhaps it was too much to hope for a quick surrender from the Krev, but I just wanted the lunacy to end. Never in my life had I known what true, lasting peace, without any looming threats, was like.

On screen, I peeked at what Terran military officials were reviewing with sharp gazes. Krev streets had fallen into near anarchy after word of the Consortium’s plotting had gotten out, highlighted by reports of an orbital ring being set on fire. That must be quite the sight in the night sky, but that was a dangerous environment for Lecca to be situated in. The encouraging sign was to see that the populace was rabid, with no overarching support for the government the way Federation sympathizers still existed even after Nikonus’ chitchat. The conniving bastards had no leg to stand on.

There are no people left to rule over, if there’s near-total rebellion and loss of support. They have no ideological purpose to point to as justification, nor even a delusional one. The Krev Consortium must admit defeat and accept its own collapse.

“Here we go,” I said, as our vessel popped out of subspace near Avor.

Admiral Monahan flashed her pearly white teeth at the camera, opening a hail to Tonvos’ official channels. “On behalf of the Sapient Coalition, we declare our treaty null and void. We will not accept any outcome that does not dismantle those who would rebuild the Federation. I advise that you surrender unconditionally. Your secrets are out in the open. Your people have turned against you, and you cannot silence such a multitude.”

The reply that came back was a chilling laugh. “We don’t need the people. They can all be replaced if they don’t submit. There can be as many of us as we want. Not to mention, we mined who they were every day; we can reset things to how they were like that. We’re infinite, humans…unkillable! Do your worst.”

I gawked as the Krev speaker transmitted a brief image that seemed like a selfie, taken of a metal robotic mammal that wasn’t even trying to blend in the way Elias Meier’s digitized form did. Behind the monstrosity was an entire legion of cyborgs, stretched out like a platoon ready to march. How were we supposed to fight…fuck, I wasn’t trained for this! Shit, it didn’t help me quell Gress’ paranoia when the nonsense he spewed wound up being spot on. Whatever his mental state, perhaps I shouldn’t underestimate his intellect and deductive skills. As a hostage negotiator, he’d excelled at reading people. 

Gress might well have to negotiate for his daughter, as well as the continued flesh-and-blood existence of Avor’s entire population. I imagined it wasn’t just the Krev, since we knew from Mafani that there were Underscales and Listeners from every species; the Trombil, who loved augmenting themselves with cybernetics, might be the quickest to welcome such developments. They were the silent backbone of this, operating the technology that allowed this surveillance dystopia to metastasize. 

I wasn’t sure how to react now that the Krev Consortium flaunted their machinations and had dropped all pretense of protecting the people. What I did know was that humanity needed a more complex strategy than killing them all, if the schemers could come right back.

A/N - 90! The Krev Consortium is seeing widespread revolt, and Taylor and Gress swoop in to try to rescue Lecca as the UN sails off to open warfare. Cala and Taylor support Gress, who has gotten a bit addled by paranoia, but the Krev’s prediction about not keeping the physical people and hitting rewind proves to be Avor’s true plan. They declare that those in the know can be reborn and duplicated as many times as necessary, constituting an unkillable army.

What do you think of the Consortium’s abuse of this technology and their willingness to discard the people, if that’s what it takes? How do you feel about the contrast to the UN’s use of memory transcripts to create new life? How can the UN hope to take out an “infinite” army of transcript people…and can Taylor and Gress hope to save Lecca?

As always, thank you for reading and supporting! I know what I stated, but I frankly don’t have the energy to cut my turnaround time and move the schedule back a day. For a variety of reasons, I’m treading water a bit as is, if I’m being candid. My pacing is…a little insane, and that was manageable when the flame was burning bright. On the home stretch, it’s more about doing right by you guys and making it to the finish line.

Unless there’s any major objections, I think I’ll leave the schedule on the new pattern for the time being. Still the same amount of content per week!